Tecno's borderless phone is equally beautiful and silly

Published Sep 6, 2026, 7:31 AM EDT Rita is a Senior Writer at Android Police. Her love story with Android started in 2010 and has been going stronger with every update, device, tip, app, and game. She's a huge Pixel fan and has spent an inordinate amount of time using and testing Google's ecosystem, apps, and services. She lives in France, speaks more than three languages, follows Real Madrid, and spends any free time she has traveling. Once upon a time, she was a pharmacist as well. To say that the tech world is fascinated with bezels would be an understatement. Every time a new product is announced, the discussion revolves around how thick or thin the bezels are, and whether they are too imposing or not, or give a cheap effect or not. For several years now, companies have pandered to this obsession: Any border around a display has been thinned out as much as possible and nearly disappeared, one way or another. We saw it with everything from TVs to computers and now phones. And we're slowly moving to a future where we'd just be holding a display — barely any border or bezel in sight. But I didn't think that that future was already here, or nearly here, until I held the Tecno Borderless Concept phone at IFA 2026 in my own hands. No bezels, no borders, no ugly black edges Well, almost At first glance, the Tecno Borderless Concept phone looked like any regular smartphone out there. Then I did a double-take. Something about it looked "nicer." Just a little more elegant and a little more refined than every other phone I've seen. Of course, it's the bezel-less aspect causing this effect. The lack of a black border all around the display creates a smooth, almost surreal look. You get the full 6.78-inch panel surrounded by nothing but the phone's frame. At times, looking at it made it feel like the screen was floating. The effect is surprising, especially when I looked at it head on. Even for a "concept" device that isn't ready for a mass market release, the execution seemed so good. Not flawless, though. If you look at some of the photos above, you'll notice that there's still something black peeking between the display and the border at a tilted angle. But it's so minuscule that you won't even notice it. Pedants, though, will point to it and say it's not 100% borderless if we can still see a border. It's so silly, and I didn't want to like it But I do As much as I hate to admit it, I enjoyed holding and looking at this Tecno Borderless Concept phone. I also liked the effect of the bezel-less display, and the lack of the tiniest black edge around it. I'm not proud of this because I really, really wanted to hate it. I think that the pursuit of bezel-less or borderless devices is fundamentally a silly and stupid endeavor, and that no one actually sees those minuscule 1-2mm black rims around our phones unless they actively look for them. Think of it this way: When you hold your phone, do you look at the screen or the surrounding edge? I know I look at the screen, and more accurately, the content on that screen. I look at the photo or web page or message or video; I don't get distracted by a black border. And therein lies my issue with this Borderless Concept from Tecno: It's certainly an engineering feat, but it's not necessary, and we were all fine with the minuscule bezels we had. A lot of money and research has been poured into fixing a problem that isn't a real problem. Besides that, what's wrong with bezels anyway? They serve as a good place to rest your thumb or finger without touching anything, opening apps inadvertently, or triggering things on the screen. The rest of the phone is not bad Tecno would move units if it sold this Perhaps the thing that impressed me the most about the Tecno Borderless Concept is that the rest of it actually looks really nice — not just the disappearing black bezels around the display. The phone seems to be made from plastic, but the silver accents on the frame and the nice patterned white back both looked interesting and felt nice in the hand — at least to someone who isn't a glass and metal snob like me. Below the surface, Tecno calls this bad boy the Camon Slim 5G, and has pumped it with a few interesting specs. There's the MediaTek Dimensity 7300e, a 6,000mAh battery, 256GB of storage and 8GB of RAM, a 32MP selfie cam, and a main 50MP shooter. The phone runs Android 16, but as with any unreleased concept like the Tecno Magnetic Modular from MWC 2026, I wouldn't take any of these specs or features as sure-fire details because who knows if the phone will be released, and whether the specs will change by then. It looks so good, but we don't need this I came away from my time with the Tecno Borderless Concept phone thinking that it looked much better than I expected, and more interesting than I would've given it credit for before seeing it in person. I just feel guilty and superficial for liking it, though, because even if the bezel-less execution is nearly flawless, and the overall aesthetic is improved, I still think it's absolutely pointless and unnecessary. This is the kind of advancement in tech that no one needs, really, but it writes headlines, and it brings eyeballs. So good on Tecno for building something interesting, but can we please go back to figuring out how to make phones charge even faster or batteries last longer? Those two changes would be much more beneficial than the removal of a 1mm black border from the display's edge.